Vancouver Day 3 - Japadog/ Granville Island

I went into downtown, marking my first city cycle ever. It was really great. I was going as fast as a car with all the benefits of being a pedestrian. This city is pretty cycle friendly [I originally had reservations, because I didn't actually know anything about cycling on the road... nor did I have a drivers license].

My first stop was at Japadog. I ordered the yakisoba dog, which was soba noodles with okonomiyaki sauce and pickled ginger. The hot dog itself was really good quality and it was delicious. I snapped a pic of the dude handing me the dog, but was a bit premature and caught him halfway to a peace sign. [Japadog was one of the highlights of this trip, and I have no idea why]

I headed down to the granville island after, and parked my bike before going across via the aquabus ferry. [The bike rental came complete with a lock]

Granville Island (actually a peninsula) was interesting. There was a large enclosed public market where you could get a bit of the local goods that are a bit pricey. It reminded me of the farmers market in Ottawa. The rest of the island had lots of buskers and small specialty shops like 'Lobster Man',

which sold fresh shellfish. I got a card with a picture of a whale from a native shop. I also saw a great busker duo called 'Maria in the Shower'. One guy played accordian as base chords and he sang/played trumpet. The other guy had a stand up bass. They played some ethnic tunes from all over the place and the trumpet guy even sang a song on the guys bass as he played it. I bought their cd, but I doubt it will be nearly as good as them live. They were promoting their show later that night but I opted out. [The experience of seeing them was amazing, but as suspected their cd was pretty mediocre. Definately great entertainers]

I walked by a really bad comedian who was making fun of passers by. I can't stand bad comedians. [I would later see this guy again]

I took the ferry back across and biked up to stanley park to the bike rental place, to drop off my bike. It was 4:30pm-ish so I did all my laundry and prepped for leaving. Afterwards, I settled my amazon order with Nita and checked my email.

I headed to the indian restaurant Kyle suggested, but it had an hour and a half wait. It looked posh. Instead I went to a sushi place called Mr. Sushi as suggested by a hostel worker. I was skeptical, because he didn't seem to like the sushi so much as the price [my first hint that the place was bad, was that it was called mr. sushi]. I was right and got a lot of sushi in a combo, but it wasn't great. The place itself had a lot of cool sumo's on the wall. [Another tipoff that the place was probably not great. It seemed like a family owned, with the owner's brother making the sushi. There was definately no love in that meal, but it was decent enough]

With not much else to do, I stopped by a place and got some drinks. There was a comedy festival and they closed off the main downtown street [That bad comedian from Granville was out and making fun of passers-by, also he was trying to rally some people to get a group to watch his act. It was really desperate and hard to watch, so I walked past, did I mention that I hate bad comedians?]. For the festival as a promotion, they had live roosters for the best "why did the chicken cross the road?" joke. They were huge and looked unimpressed [Roosters I imagine sleep early. It was kind of sad because it was close to midnight, and there were a bunch of drunk douchebags yelling to the roosters trying to be cool or whatever douchebags do to get attention. The poor roosters would wake up momentarily, and attempted to go back to sleep. Poor birds]. I missed Anton (the kiwi) and didn't hang out with Nicola (the Montreal roomate), so I was solo that night. After the drinks I felt a bit low and homesick, so I late-night called Nita and felt better [I didn't drink enough for it to be considered a drunk dial, but I was a few beers away from that haha]. I went out and had a super mario dog for a place called 'Dougie Dogs'. It was pricey, but the hot dog was really high quality. With that and Japadog, Vancouver has some great gourmet hot dogs. The mario dog had a cheesy jalepino dog with lots of mushroom and cheese. Really good, but I give the edge to Japadog because it had a better bun/dog ratio. [Also, I got the Mario dog for obvious reasons. I'm sure if I chose a different dog, it'd be even better]

I went to bed after. good sleep. [Surprising since I was in the heart of the downtown club scene where they actually close off the roads every weekend. In the end though, it was pretty quiet 4 floors up]